Madame Victoria Read online

  Ignoring the people brushing past her, she plants herself in front of the board, trembling from head to foot. This intensity gives her the feeling that she has re-entered the tangible world, that she has rediscovered its shine and shadows. One by one, the doctors file past and gently shift the wooden slats, as if the entire hospital has slowed down while they perform this old-fashioned yet crucial act. In the late afternoon, the traffic grows denser; Victoria twiddles her invisible hair, which hisses like combustible gas. Eon is not among the group leaving the building, but she doesn’t despair. The light declines, conversations become muffled, the ventilation system grumbles neurotically.

  It’s past midnight when she hears sharp footsteps approaching. Victoria shudders. Dark silhouette, bald skull, eyes of different colours—all exactly like the image her memory raises up. The ambient oxygen level drops. Victoria has stopped breathing. Eon gingerly steps up to the board, eyeing it like it was about to blow up in his face. He lifts his arm, lets his hand hover before his name. Then, as if the slat weighed a ton, he laboriously brings the word OUT into view. He glides toward the door followed by Victoria, beside herself with anticipation. As he crosses the threshold of the hospital, Victoria hesitates momentarily. She hasn’t left this place for ages. The streets, the noise, the hectic air rattle her. The night is within reach. Eon dives into the darkness. Victoria takes a deep breath and gives chase.

  He appears to have heard her running behind him. He stops, peers into the shadows for a moment, then continues on his way. Victoria frantically looks around for a weapon. The innumerable possibilities provided by the hospital recede as she moves farther away from it. After a few hundred metres, the din of Avenue des Pins swells and Victoria pictures herself pushing Eon under the wheels of a truck. But he doesn’t head toward the street. Instead, he plunges into the woods like a wolf.

  All the hate that sustained Victoria these last years is now concentrated in her body. She swoops down on Eon in a wild rush. Going all out, she locks his throat in the crook of her arm, as though she were not just invisible but improbably endowed with superhuman strength. Eon easily breaks free, and when he throws his attacker her head dashes against the stony ground. She is dazed but stands back up and renews her assault, this time wielding a branch with which she lays into her enemy. As he fends off the blows, Eon searches the motionless night for an explanation. At last he understands. “I knew you’d come back one day,” he mutters. He grabs away her club and whirls it around him to keep his adversary at bay.

  Victoria goes deeper into the woods, still dizzy with pain from the injury to her head. She suspects she’s bleeding; her right temple feels wet. Groping about, she lays hands on a rock, and the cold, implacable touch of granite emboldens her. Straining, she straightens up and lifts the rock. Her muscles have been metallized. The projectile must weigh fifty pounds. Clasping it against her breast, she charges ahead in pursuit of Eon. Once she is within range, she hurls the rock with all her might. In the darkness, she hears the impact and then a groan. The man has been hit in the back. Coming closer, she sees him stretched out full length. She picks up her weapon and in a single predatory motion slams it down on Eon’s skull. The crunch pierces the silence. Without uttering even one of the words she dreamed of spitting in his face, Victoria lifts her rock once more and strikes him again and again, until Eon disintegrates.

  After staring at the corpse for several minutes, Victoria knows that it’s over. Nothing else will happen, Eon won’t disappear, there is nothing to be learned from his carcass. There will be no explanation, no revelation. She turns toward the horizon, the downtown skyline. What better way to greet this victory than to see the metropolis glittering like stolen treasure? But all Victoria can feel is the burning sensation eating away at the right side of her head. The ferrous smell is everywhere. She’s thirsty. She staggers forward through the sapling branches, her thoughts in a jumble. The churning of air conditioners clamps the wood in a black vise.

  She finds herself in a clump of wintergreen, judging from the fragrance that rises from her feet to her head. She breathes in and it occurs to her that she too has a scent that other people actually may have kept on detecting while she believed she was all alone in the world, an olfactory marker she might have used to communicate, like cats, dogs, and all animals familiar with the unseen. Then her thoughts crumble. She curls up into what’s left of her and collapses in the fragrant herbs.

  The night wears on, her oblivion grows thicker. If, in the morning, someone had stood nearby, they would have noticed amid the first rays of light and the sighs of the city, an opalescent skin, a tired body materializing in disparate bits. Brittle at first, the features would have taken on a smoother texture, revealing the arch of an eyebrow, a protruding collarbone, the outline of a knee, a breath fixed on dry lips. But there is no one. The dawn is empty, empty and cold for undefeated women.

  Victoria as Woman

  Like many things in his life, this didn’t start with a wish but a duty. His superiors had told him: “It takes a man to finish the job, but it’ll take a woman to get the ball rolling.” He’d laughed, having always considered himself a man who didn’t waver, who wasn’t ambiguous like some of his more delicate colleagues; in sum, a male whose maleness couldn’t be dissimulated. But most of all he was obedient, so he had agreed to play the game—willingly. It would be fun.

  He was to neutralize a traitor. A fat Moscow vulgarian, rotten to the tips of his sausage-like fingers, who cheerfully jumped from one camp to the other, clearly for the Americans’ benefit. The agents who went about transforming Maslo had carefully researched the target’s preferences: brown hair, dark complexion, large bosom. Maslo had to acquire the ABCs of cosmetics. First, the skin. Given his distant Khorasani roots, the bronze hue of his complexion was in no need of enhancement, but it was necessary to mask some very telling scars.

  Next, the eyes, which he was taught to enlarge and darken to give them a feline appearance that was then softened by eyebrows shaped to a pointed arch so as to produce an air of surprise. Astonishment, he learned, was the formidable weapon of the femme fatale. On the big night, he’ll need to put the final touches on this look with false eyelashes fastened with a nasty, vinegar-smelling glue, the only kind resistant to the sweat that invariably breaks out over a truly male body all the way to his eyelids.

  The mouth had to be velvety red, and the chest, ample and uplifted. But the key to a successful transformation was less about breasts than buttocks. “What attracts men is a marked difference between waist size and hip size,” Agent Mikhailovka had explained with authority, adding that the ideal ratio was approximately 7:10. After taking a few measurements with a tape, she unceremoniously stuffed the ultra-tight underwear that Maslo had been made to slip on and surveyed her handiwork while the members of the operational cell looked on approvingly. The makeup-wearing man of a moment ago had metamorphosed. Maslo himself had to agree: he was a splendid woman.

  Luring the traitor to his hotel room was child’s play. But as soon as the door clicked shut the double agent whipped out a straight razor. Maslo was overwhelmed with doubt: Was the man on to him? He soon understood that what the spy actually had in mind was to act out his sadistic fantasies with the defenceless woman he believed was standing in front of him. Maslo would never forget the panic in his adversary’s eyes on realizing that he was dealing with a Russian agent. Maslo took his time finishing him off with his flawlessly manicured hands.

  After that, whenever a mission called for a hundred kilos of muscle in the shape of woman who appeared to weigh half as much, they sent Maslo. The challenge spiced up his career. He was adept at fighting, hitting a target at twelve hundred metres, administering poison, driving cars, running computers; assassinations had become all but mundane for him. But doing it in drag changed everything.

  He enjoyed creating effects, using perfumes, makeup, and curling irons to create the perfect smokescreen. And more than an
ything, he loved his voice. Maslo effortlessly found the octave that erased its gruffness and replaced it with a warm mellifluence that he unleashed on his targets. He sometimes amused himself by putting on various accents to add an exotic touch. He injected his Russian with sharp Germanic angles or the sensuality of the French socialists. In English, he became a quirky Australian woman or a frantic Italian. When he spoke German he stayed Russian. It was enough to fascinate most of his victims.

  The dazzling redhead, the clever Asian, the mischievous babushka artfully carried out some twenty missions. Then the eighties swept over the Soviet empire, Gorbachev came to power, and the assignments grew less and less interesting. Maslo watched the Berlin Wall come down on the staticky television of a New York hotel room. You didn’t need a Ph.D. in political science to figure out that yesterday’s heroes would soon be public enemies. The lining of his travel bag concealed two passports that the KGB knew nothing about. Maslo closed his eyes and picked one. Canada, he read on the cover.

  He had every reason not to go back to Montreal, which is why he decided to move there. When he arrived, he spent almost twenty-four hours on a little pilgrimage that took him from the waterfront grain silos to the Olympic Stadium and from the east-end refineries to the generous greenery of La Fontaine Park. Autumn was at hand, the ground was cold, and everything reminded him of Mila. Standing by the park’s large, stinking pond, Maslo wept as if he’d been buried alive.

  Fortunately, the semi-decrepit city was blessed with a tremendous energy that penetrated where neither the wind nor even the light could get in: gaps between buildings, cracks in the concrete, the depths of basements crowded with jobless people drunk on poetry and lust. This time around Maslo was free to take part in these festivities, admire the multicoloured facades, and stroll down the alleys overflowing with the organic commotion of lives in close proximity. For a lifelong traveller like Maslo, feeling at home anywhere had become an aptitude on a par with speaking many languages. In Montreal, this knack of his was hardly necessary. The city welcomed him with a wonderful insouciance.

  He rented an apartment for a song, not far from the park and the bars in an area shared by students, junkies, homosexuals, and where he knew he would sleep soundly. When the winter storms swept in, the windowpanes rattled and the cold drafts nipped Maslo’s big feet through his valenki slippers. He drank syrupy coffee that boiled his lips and made his hand tremble, and wolfed down gargantuan helpings of baked beans, a local dish that he was happy to have discovered. His days were spent reading, and in the evening he slipped on his tracksuit with the logo of the GUGB, an acronym that meant nothing to the rare passersby that he came across during his nighttime jogs.

  Taking infinite precautions, he sent a coded letter to his sister and elderly mother. His sister wrote back that their mother no longer recognized anyone and that she herself was trying to forget the brother who had deserted the fatherland. He stopped writing letters to Russia altogether.

  When spring came he moved to a new place on Ontario Street located above a grocer’s fruit stall that released the first fragrances of life in May and where the customers’ voices sent out a sunny spray of local accents. On a few occasions, when he extended his walks to the posh avenues of Outremont, he thought he’d recognized Mila, that Romansh killer’s gait of hers and the categorical clack of her heels on concrete. But he pulled himself together. He had to keep the visions at bay if he was to stay sane in this city where he’d once found love and very quickly lost it again.

  The idea occurred to Maslo one summer night while he was on his way back from a run along the riverbank. The sweat was literally pouring off him and as he wiped his brow going up Visitation Street he heard bursts of laughter coming from a hole in the wall. Taken aback, he edged his dripping head into the doorway and saw a woman as long as a knife wearing an extravagant orange wig. She was whispering the unintelligible words of a song that, judging from the audience’s excitement, was obviously risqué. He watched the show from the sidewalk until the transvestite called out to him. “Hey, you there! The gorilla! If you want to listen you have to pay!” Getting no reaction from him, the lady stepped down from the stage and crossed the room, threading her way through the tables, the pastel cocktails and curly heads of hair, and then let fly at him with missiles drawn from her capacious bra. Maslo slowly retreated.

  The next evening his preparations took forever. He hadn’t touched his cosmetic kit for a long time, and he had never had to deal with such sultry weather. The foundation seemed to dissolve as soon as he applied it, and the mascara ran as if he were bawling his eyes out. He therefore decided to go with minimalist makeup, based on a few strokes of blush. A magnificent blond wig and a sequin dress rounded out the illusion. When he stepped outside, the luminous music that accompanied him as soon as he transformed into a woman took over.

  The words on the board at the entrance to the bar made him smile: “Open Mic.” Neither the barman nor the drag queen seemed to recognize him from the night before. So Maslo confidently pulled a cigarette case from his décolleté and asked for a light, his voice freighted with Russian ornamentation. The waiter was intrigued and brought a flame close to his face. Maslo turned toward the fan and blew smoke into the airstream with a fierce pout. The people seated at the tables shot admiring glances his way. The former spy smiled inwardly. He was gorgeous and he knew it.

  The evening began with an Édith Piaf number rendered by a devoted but sour voice. A duo made up of twins, one white, the other black, performed a languid tango. Then Romy Bruchési tickled the house with a few smutty jokes. Toward one in the morning, when the crowd’s drunkenness was at its peak, Maslo slid off his barstool and took a few steps, instantly lighting up the room with the flash of his sequins.

  He seized the microphone and let his gaze settle heavy and hard on the audience until they fell silent. Taking a deep breath of stale air, he intoned the opening notes of “Ochi chyornye,” Dark Eyes, the most famous and torrid song ever to come out of torrid Russia. During the few minutes of his rendition, no one breathed, no one laughed, cigarettes burned down to the fingers that held them. Maslo’s voice stirred the long-dead loves of these night owls, their fleeting passions, their unfinished grieving. When the final notes died out on his lips, the audience burst into applause.

  “Your name! What’s your name?” someone shouted. Maslo turned and answered solemnly, “Victoria Volga.” The applause erupted again, and as she left the stage she let the mic drop behind her.

  Two weeks were all it took for Victoria Volga to get her own billing at the cabaret. She was given a Thursday booking, which suited her perfectly: not a slow midweek slot but not a crazy weekend night either. The hungry anticipation of approaching leisure time, but also the despair of an ordinary day. Much of the cabaret’s clientele was made up of women trapped in men’s bodies, businessmen, truckers, family men who came to get a little breath of oxygen before diving back into the airless world where they had built themselves small, unbearable prisons. These poor souls who dreamed of another life rubbed shoulders with happily open homosexuals tanking up before the night really took off in the Gay Village, and with matrons who came from as far away as the North Shore suburbs to have some fun mixing with queens who understood them better than their sisters, neighbours, or husbands.

  Victoria Volga clashed like a gong in this company. No barnyard humour for this stoic Soviet, just emotions like molten lava, just the great soul of Russia flowing from her lips and into the patrons’ drinking glasses. Thanks to a repertoire made relatively exotic by the Iron Curtain, she offered something unique, and the bar paid for her originality in hard cash. By topping up her Thursday earnings with a few nights blending cocktails behind the counter she no longer had to dip into her savings to get by. She had a job.

  She bought her outfits at second-hand stores on Mont-Royal Avenue and church basements in the upscale neighbourhoods. Soon her male wardrobe seemed inadequate to her, so ev
en on her days off she continued to wear tight skirts and plush sweaters, close-fitting slacks, and flamboyant blouses.

  The one thing that disrupted the harmony of her daily life was the recurring apparition of Mila. Amid the frenzy of last call, just when Victoria was about to launch into “Kalinka,” Mila’s face would emerge at the far end of the room, her austere, graceful features, her eyes as black as a nine-millimetre barrel. Sometimes Victoria didn’t actually see her but felt the harsh judgment of her former lover, who surely would have found her grotesque tricked out this way. Whenever this happened, she shut her eyes so tightly her false eyelashes were in peril of flying off, spread her arms wide, and began to sing; Mila disappeared and Victoria drove the hallucination out of her thoughts.

  As predicted, the USSR fell apart, and the former agent followed every stage of its disintegration, from the Moscow putsch to the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States. She would have laughed at the suggestion that those dirges so dear to the Red Army Choir helped her cope with her sense of loss. Still, there was no denying that since going into exile she had never felt so Russian. She had reshaped herself according to an absolute cliché, but one that she inhabited so wholeheartedly as to make it convincing.